Yet emissions from burning fossil fuels are baking the planet and, therefore, the effects of extreme weather and sea-level rise are coming at us thick and fast. In many cases, we need to prepare and adapt with more urgency than we had planned to.
Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimised by bad weather in the last year or so. Was your travel disrupted? Did your home get unbearably hot? Have you been impacted by flooding? When I asked these questions at a panel event recently, only a lucky few in the audience kept their hands down.
Even if we were not individually experiencing climate change, we would want our communities to avoid these inconveniences and tragedies. After all, human societies cannot thrive underwater, which is why the Netherlands has some of the best flood management systems in the world.
